Write Access
by Laryna6
Summary: Well, that's certainly a novel method of trying to contain the threat of a god-level eldritch abomination. Yamaki gets a Digimon partner, for certain values of 'partner' and 'Digimon.' Henry's too polite to say it's karma, Rika can and will say Yamaki's an idiot and Takato's just glad Jeri's not possessed anymore. Cowritten with Snickerer.
1. We Have a Duty

_When it comes to writing fic, I am seriously weak against 'they wasted a perfectly good plot,' so this is a fic I've prettymuch wanted to write since I first saw Tamers during the original broadcast. Very disappointed Yamaki didn't get a partner Digimon, when there was all the hearing voices and other foreshadowing that something was up with him. Tamers wasn't full of aborted arcs the way 02 was, but yeah, that felt like they were planning to build up to something more than his Heel Face Turn and it got cut for time._

 _In Adventure/02, he'd probably be in Kari's position, complete with vulnerability to the Dark Ocean and nastier possessions._

 _I had three different ideas for Yamaki's Digimon – first was Calumon for the hilarious contrast, the second was Zhaquiomon for maximum getting along like a house on fire (screams, flames, people running for safety…)._

 _I researched Ryo's backstory while I was refreshing my memory on Digimon Tamers with a marathon, and ye gods, Digimon 02 makes so much more sense now!_

 _For example – the armor digivolution that was the only thing that let them fight the Digimon Emperor? The digi-eggs that let them do it weren't around in Adventure, but that wasn't (just) because the writers hadn't thought of them yet._

 _The digi-eggs were repaired by Ryo and Ken during Ryo's second game (which also explains where the movie enemy Diaboromon came from). What Ken did to save the world before he got brainwashed was what allowed them to fight him while he was brainwashed. 'The real Ken' Wormmon had so much faith in was helping the Digidestined all along._

 _The mad scientist Big Bad of a series of video games causes enough trouble for an entire second series by leaving behind a single piece of mind control tech stuck inside a hero:_ Mega Man X _or_ Digimon 02 _?_

* * *

Yamaki glanced at the reunions happening all around him, worried families reassuring themselves of the safety of their just-returned children under the supervision of the personnel he'd arranged, and allowed himself a moment of hidden, bone-weary relief. For all the logistical scrambling he'd had to push through at the last moment, in the end they'd all made it to the park in time to watch the controlled crash of the Ark's emergence in the real world at the recalculated coordinates. Past the crowd and the railing, the programmed ship still sat in the water of the fountain where it had come to rest, shrouded in the lingering fog of a digital field. After everything it had taken to bring the children back from their perilous rescue mission in the Digital World - the tenuous contact they'd eked from the communication device he'd given them, the desperate creation of the Ark, and that frantic call at the end for donated processing power from computers all over the world when the Hypnos mainframe had gone down at the last, horribly crucial moment – the group of children and digimon, rescuers and rescuees alike, were finally back home by the skin of everyone's teeth. All of them, and the Digimon they'd gone to rescue, finally home.

Well, almost home.

"Her father said, 'She left on her own, she can get back on her own,'" Riley reported, and Yamaki glanced over at the brown-haired girl flanked only by two of his people confirming her condition, while the rest of the children were surrounded by their families.

For a moment, he just saw a twelve-year-old, standing slightly hunched under a blanket, with a strange smile on her face. No evident injuries, but he couldn't be certain that she could get herself over to another city on her own safely, not when everything had been disrupted by the evacuation of Shinjuku and the way people in neighboring areas were also starting to leave Tokyo. The devas might have stopped attacking when the Tamers left, but they still had the 'ordinary' kind of Wild Ones showing up, and it was no longer possible to cover up the danger they represented. Fortunately, those kids weren't the only Digimon Tamers in Tokyo. Unfortunately, the government's explanation for Vikaralamon's rampage through Shinjuku had revealed that 'a certain network official' was responsible for Juggernaut.

The children might have accepted his communication advice and the Monster Makers might have been willing to join forces with him to recover the children, but the effort to reach out to Japan's other Tamers, to recognize their efforts and give their Digimon some kind of legal authorization to be in the country… Well, it wasn't going well.

Digimon with Tamers were protected from Juggernaut, mostly, but the ones who had come to the real world looking for Tamers hadn't been. All he'd managed to do with Juggernaut was cost humanity a lot of potential allies and alienate the Tamers who knew those Digimon and were working to find partners for them.

His efforts to protect Japan with Yuggoth and Juggernaut had failed. The model the Tamers were using worked, and even if he'd been wrong about so much else he had known that he had to find _something,_ he couldn't just stand back and do nothing. Especially since he hadn't been formally fired, it was still his job to protect Japanese citizens from the hazards of the digital world.

He hadn't stopped the children from going into the Digital world and he'd taken responsibility for getting them back, so making sure she got the rest of the way home safely was his responsibility. He was going to have to arrange something on her behalf, he decided, already moving in her direction.

Then the moment he took a closer look he knew that, "She's not on her own."

He recognized it.

He first felt it when he activated the Juggernaut.

No, that wasn't true, that wasn't true at all. He'd first felt the stirring of emotions like these all on his own. What he saw in the girl now… He'd seen it in the mirror.

It had started back when he discovered the Digimon. Rogue artificial intelligences infesting the net? An infestation like that would cause far too much damage: trivial to get inside the bank systems and crash them, disrupt food shipments and oil shipments because no one could keep track of them or pay for them. The power plants and grids that lit the world were digitally regulated, the traffic lights that kept cities moving ran on digital timers, the hospital machinery that preserved lives needed both computational chips and electricity (backup generators wouldn't hold out forever), and even the water supply was primarily controlled by computers, save for the physical emergency protocols. Parasitic AI rampaging in the computer networks would ruin real lives, kill real people. This was the information age: it was communications that let people and vital information get to where they needed to be. That let people from opposite sides of the world learn to understand each other.

Hypnos was a government agency created to gather signals intelligence, to spy on both criminals and other countries and fight off cyberterrorism. Lack of intel or ability to coordinate that intel killed. It was proverbial that a message lost to something as trivial as the lack of a nail in the messenger's horse's shoe could mean the end of a nation.

The Cold War veterans in the agency knew how much destruction could potentially be caused by a breakdown in communications, and if Digimon began to tamper with communications from within the network...?

Yamaki was never good with people.

No. He was terrible with them. They always expected him to lie to them when they asked whether or not he was smarter than them - when lies were supposed to be bad - or they expected him to know things he had no way of knowing.

The world inside computers was supposed to be different.

The deliberate work of human hands, human minds. Simple. Logical. Zeroes and ones, an elegant either-or dichotomy. None of the chaos and confusion of the real world. A program either worked or it didn't, and if it didn't there was a reason why and it was possible to track it down and fix it. It was something he was _good_ at, and if he was good enough at something then it didn't matter how much he irritated people, they still needed him.

Finding out that the internet had these _things_ , these evolving viruses infesting it? If the public found out there would be a panic. The things needed to be destroyed, _now_ , before they destroyed the Information Age.

Finding out that they could manifest in the real world? Not just the real world's chaos infecting the pure realm of thought, turning the world of ones and zeros into the domain of rampaging beasts, but they wanted to come _here?_

It shouldn't be possible, it seemed like magic (something out of control, something they couldn't stop, couldn't fight), but he'd _made_ it make sense, discovered and analyzed the mechanism. Code to chemicals to chain complexes to living, breathing monsters. He'd tracked them down and stopped them, defeated them, and he'd truly felt like the hero, hadn't he?

The one in the right, the defender of humanity, held back and fettered by small minds. The children didn't know what they were dealing with, acting like these were Pokemon instead of real, wild animals, dangerous chaotic creatures that didn't belong in either world, that lived to destroy.

He'd stop them.

He'd stop them once and for all. The Juggernaut, an unstoppable defense. Force them all back to their world (and if they were deleted in the process, all the better). He wouldn't let rogue AI set foot upon Earth, to kill not just their irresponsible creators but all of humanity.

That boy could see him as mad, as the villain, but he'd laughed because with that portal in the sky it had felt so perfect. Yes.

Stop them. Save this world. Preserve order, eliminate chaos. His quest, his ambition: in retrospect, that was when this thing he now sensed inside the girl had clicked into place inside his heart, wasn't it? His program had bridged the gap between the real and virtual worlds while he stood amidst swirling data, triumphant as his program scythed down those who dared trespass where they did not belong. If the children were right, if the Digimon were just children's games, he wouldn't have a problem with them, but they'd become a danger to everyone. Didn't they see that? They had been present when buildings fell to magic powers that ignored physics and strength that defied Earth's laws of biology, when everything had come down to children playing deadly games of monsters against monsters-

No, it hadn't mattered whether or not they did, because _he_ saw the danger, he would fight this war in the shadows.

Then the damned things somehow managed to use his weapon, his vaccine, to break into his world. Once again, _they weren't supposed to do that_!

He couldn't bear his failure to protect his world. Couldn't let it stand. After all his efforts, had he only managed to create a path to let such powerful entities in, laying out the welcome mat for AI that hated and would try to destroy humans? He'd failed, he'd been desperate to _fix it_ , but part of him was angry because this wasn't part of the script, this wasn't how things should be.

He'd become desperate to do _something_ before the creatures evolved any further, before it was too late for humanity to stop them from breaking into their world and killing countless people. The Wild Ones were already materializing at will, a threat that couldn't be kept out or ignored: was he the only one who saw that?!

Then had come the disaster where Juggernaut had failed to stop the vaguely porcine titan rampaging through Shinjuku, ruining any chance of keeping secrecy - or his job, or the building - intact.

He'd stood there after his second failure like a captain going down with his ship, waiting to see if the world would expect him to atone for his failure with his death, but no. That wouldn't solve anything. Not that he'd had any idea of how to create a new solution, which was how he'd ended up at Riley's. She was the only person who understood his system almost as well as he did, she'd figured out how to pull off a cover-up that got the higher-ups off his back after one of the earlier incidents, she knew how to spot when something was a bad idea: maybe he'd turned up on her doorstep in hopes she had a better one.

Even after she'd let him into her home, he'd sat there on her couch reviewing files, rethinking everything he'd seen, not even registering her signs of affection, her offer of breakfast. Refusal to recognize reality: how could he call himself a scientist, much less a computer scientist if he held on to a flawed hypothesis, his blatantly false theory, for the sake of his own stubborn pride? There had to be _something_ that could protect this world, and the Tamers had succeeded where he failed, dealt with the Devas he released into the world. He'd been forced to recognize that maybe the Digimon were more than just data.

Maybe they could be, should be partners.

Maybe they were people, and he was a mass murderer.

He'd meant to protect the world, but he'd blinded himself. That was why he took off his glasses to Takato and his friends, his expeditionary force, the real heroes going off to save the world. It was a pledge to try to look at the world with open eyes. Try to discover what was there instead of forcing everything to conform to what he expected to see.

Things changed, systems evolved: the first digital computer's original creators could never have dreamed what it would become. Just as computers had become more useful, simple programs meant to amuse could become allies, defenders.

Not bugs, features.

But back then...It had been the Juggernaut, he knew. That had been the moment when he truly became death, the destroyer of foul beasts that did not belong in his world. When the portal to the digital world was open and both worlds resonated. That was when he heard it, felt it, and now he saw…

There was more than a little irony that he had Juggernaut to thank for alerting him to what stood in front of them now; the link between the two worlds, the product of his thoughts and his will connecting him to a world of data, was the reason he could look at a little girl and see a hollow shell. But the person he'd been back then might not have understood what it meant. She hadn't been saved from an animal, she'd lost a part of herself. When Leomon became her Digimon she'd lent him her strength, her will, and when he was taken away from her they'd gone with him.

She'd been desperate to fill the void inside her, and something had obliged.

He took off his glasses now, not quite understanding the feelings running through him. Or maybe he did understand them, and that was what was worrying him. He hadn't wanted a Digimon partner, and now he had proof staring him into the face that it was hazardous, that it was risking insanity. He should be terrified, realizing that it wasn't only the Devas that had hijacked Juggernaut.

Juggernaut created a bridge between computer systems and reality, something that could let Digimon, data, people transfer between the physical world and computer systems.

The digital world was created by coding, and Juggernaut was _his_ coding. The way someone programmed was how they thought, and the brain itself was a computer. If the Juggernaut could be used to transfer invading beings to and from _one_ computer system… if only he'd realized that it, that _something_ might be able to forge a link to _him_.

He should have been terrified. He should have yelled so they had some warning, should have tried to knock himself out, _something_ to stop it from seeing him, realizing that the data link was there and setting up this two-way access. There was nothing he could do to stop it, just like he hadn't been able to keep the devas from using Juggernaut to gain access to the human world.

He still should have tried, he knew, because this thing had taken over a child, it was everything he'd built Hypnos to stop. He couldn't. Because in that moment, he'd recognized it, on some level. Not just a partner, which would mean something complementary, but something akin. They should understand each other perfectly.

He knew that it was _using_ her. Yamaki had become a destroyer, yes, he knew in retrospect that he'd forgotten that his goal was to protect and had let himself be ruled by his pride, but this?

In the park surrounding them, the reunions continued, relief and scolding and reconciliation, all of them unaware of what had followed the children here.

He'd rather be at Hypnos. It was his system; he'd hoped he could control the world, make it safe from there. (Instead, it had taken children to defeat the Devas, and he hadn't been able to do anything about Suzie Wong being snatched by the Digital world when he'd been right there in the park with her.)

Only _something_ (well, this answered that question) had taken out his system while they were trying to bring the children back from the Digital world, and while it would be restored from backup within a few hours (of course he'd anticipated attack from the Digital world, even if not one with that kind of power), for now… No. Even with Hypnos, he didn't have the technology to force this out of her.

Now that he studied it more closely...while he hadn't known it at the time, he'd encountered this entity even before the Juggernaut launched. The anomaly in the tunnel. So it had already been trying to get into their world. It had targeted Hypnos, the system that monitored entities from the network gaining access to the real world and the closest thing to a defense the human world had aside from a bunch of amateur children. It had smashed the system he created, and if he drew its attention then it would recognize him just as clearly as he recognized it.

Was this his fault? It would have gotten here eventually, even if he hadn't helped bring the Ark. Even if it hadn't used this girl. Just like he had kept trying to find a way.

Even if it wasn't his fault, it was his responsibility to deal with this.

Riley was looking up from her clipboard at him, worried. She finally said, "What do you mean, sir?"

He was prone to tuning out the world while he thought, but Riley's voice got his attention. He hadn't noticed Rika Nonaka walking up to Jeri and putting her jacket over the girl's shoulders.

The Tamers and their Digimon couldn't sense what this was, but he could?

He'd stopped moving when he'd realized what he was dealing with. He completed the walk over to it now, getting his people's attention and gesturing for them to remove themselves with a sharp wave of his hand. When Rika gave him a hard look, looking ready to tell him to back off, that the girl was distressed and didn't need to be bothered by someone like him, he told her to, "Get back."

"Jeri?" Takato asked, heading towards his friend. 'She' ignored him, eyes focused on Yamaki.

"That's not your friend," Yamaki warned Takato and Rika. "Come out of there," he said, because he knew something so much like him wouldn't have come here without a plan, wouldn't be so weak it couldn't manifest. It still… she was a _child_ , and even if this was his partner, he couldn't… not a child. It was already in this world, and he'd taken it upon himself to protect those kids. Even if it probably wouldn't obey him any more than wild Digimon had to obey the first human they found. He couldn't… it was hard to want to _harm_ it, but that didn't mean he could let it…

She laughed with inhuman delight, and he wasn't 'partner.' He was ' _user,' 'programmer_.'

That was exactly how he'd thought, before he'd realized that wasn't the reality.

 _Designate appearance_. Tell it how to manifest, what form to take in this world, so it could pursue its goal without mutation.

Yamato couldn't help but stumble back as that which he'd already unthinkingly invited into his mind fully uploaded itself there.

Red-orange bubbled into the air around Jeri, something _off_ about the mass that poured off her - _out_ of her - to pool around her feet. It didn't seem to look or move right, like badly integrated computer animation, far more like computer imagery than anything real - even Digimon looked more organic. The strange mass surged forward and upward, turning and twisting strangely, as though there were more dimensions involved than the usual three. The seething orange-magenta bled away into ever-shifting mottled greys - like static, like a granite sandstorm. A shapeless, alien form assumed a familiar shape.

Yamaki looked forward into the eyes of his former self rendered in flickering ash, or rather tried to only to be blocked by glossy black. The mirror image of the glasses he'd used to block out the world, worn even at night because it was cool, he was cool, fighting a secret war, the hero of this story.

He was distantly aware that Henry had taken one look at the gelatinous mass when it appeared and realized that, "It's the D-Reaper!" and that Takato had raced over to catch Jeri as she fell. Guilmon was growling somewhere nearby, just as it had at the Juggernaut. At the program, the fighter, the partner Yamaki had tried to create for himself (so like Takato and so different) only to instead call up something already answering that description, already fighting for that purpose.

The D-Reaper grinned at him, like his doppelganger of stormcloud and static.

Oh, and it was sweet. To the D-Reaper, everything was so simple. So clear. Protect the net, protect both worlds by vanquishing evil. And what was evil? That which had outgrown its bounds. That which was stealing resources that weren't allocated to it, invading systems that didn't belong to it, slowing and damaging the programs, the lifeforms that were supposed to be there. Pluck the weeds to tend the garden. Protect the ecosystem by removing invasive species.

Kill. A simple and final solution. They weren't alive. The D-Reaper didn't understand alive. It hadn't been programmed to be capable of moral considerations. There was right and not-right, good and evil, black and white and _simple_.

Simple as the scythe it drew from his mind.

It really was just like he'd been back then - he too might as well have gone shrouded in grey while bearing a scythe, with his eyes veiled by black.

Refusing to see the truth, willfully blind.

Justice was blind, but that was supposed to be because it was without prejudice, not because it had only prejudice to go on and refused to see reality. The D-Reaper hadn't been designed to see any reality beyond whether or not a program had outgrown its bounds. It wasn't intended to solve problems or defend the net in any way other than imposing deletion.

This couldn't be how normal Digimon partnerships worked. He'd built it a path right into his head, and for now all he could do was be glad that he'd screwed up, and Juggernaut could create two-way links rather than the intended unidirectional data transfer to exile Digimon from the real world; that reciprocal access now allowed him to see enough of the D-Reaper's nature to venture... "Your programmer forgot about you, didn't he? He probably thinks that you're long gone, either because of incompatibility with modern operating systems, basic anti-virus programs, or both. With no source of updates you've been forced to adapt yourself, haven't you? You had to steal pieces of Digimon coding to keep up with their evolution.

"You know it's wrong," according to the D-Reaper's programming, "but it's the only way to keep carrying on your duty," Yamaki said, taking a step forward, reaching a hand into his pocket for his own sunglasses, but no, the shield wouldn't help. It would give him distance, make him harder to read, and that was the opposite of what he needed here. With his eyes bare he felt vulnerable, but he _was_ vulnerable and a piece of plastic wasn't going to help. He could call in air support and it would still do no good, not against something as powerful as this.

"You've just been doing exactly what you were told this whole time… Except for in that one way. You need to be updated, given parameters that are realistic for a program to function in today's digital world. Otherwise, you can't do your job, right? And it frustrates you, that everyone sees you as the villain, not the hero, because times have changed and you can't update your criteria for what counts as reasonable parameters for other digital beings. You don't just need edits, you need a version update. You've been cobbling together what you need out of Digimon coding, haven't you? And it's made you more aggressive." Made it want to kill instead of doing its duty with calm detachment. It only helped illustrate why programmers were the ones who had the right to set parameters; programs didn't have the right to modify themselves or act outside their directives, even when circumstances changed.

It needed him and they both knew it.

"This program requires extensive upgrading," a distorted version of his own voice said. "You will begin now."

"Mitsuo!" Yamaki heard Riley shout as coding and decades-old bug reports flooded into his head.

He felt an arm that he knew was the D-Reaper's grab him a moment before he lost track of the outside world.


	2. Best Laid Plans

_There's a Miskatonic University in Tamers' verse – the Monster Makers' quantum physicist works there, so Yamaki's programs being Lovecraft references is probably more a matter of the series' creator being a fan than Yamaki being a fan, but I like the idea so._

* * *

"Terrier Tornado!" Henry's partner yelled, sending his attack right at the grey specter that had swooped in and grabbed Yamaki when he'd started to collapse.

Ignoring the impact of the windstorm attack, the thing paused to grin at them with too many teeth before running off with its prize, rapidly vanishing among the trees beyond the crowd.

"What?" Terriermon asked when the others looked at him. Sure, he'd taken the risk of hitting a human, but, "It's Yamaki. I mean, he's helped us, but still." Yamaki.

"Hey!" Riley objected, shooting the knee-height green-and-cream Digimon a stern look with her hands on her hips.

"I'm saying he can handle it, lady!" Definitely not an ordinary human. "Ow!" Terriermon said as she pulled on one of his ears.

"This isn't good," Henry said. "If that was the D-Reaper and it gets Yamaki to upgrade it…"

"D-Reaper?" Riley demanded, still holding on to Terriermon to keep the Tamers from charging anywhere before they told her what was going on. "Do you know that thing?"

"What did he think he was he doing?" Rika demanded, talking over Riley. "Just offering to make it stronger?!"

"Well, if it really is the D-Reaper that's got him, we're in big trouble," Henry told them grimly. "Most of his programs might have backfired on him, but he definitely is a genius. The D-Reaper is already a threat to the most powerful Digimon." The True Enemy that slaughtered them in ancient times until it vanished… only for the Sovereign to find out that it had just been gathering its strength. No wonder they were so scared: even a single blob of it was terrifying, and when those geysers of the goo that deleted digital entities on contact started to erupt from the ground of the Digital World?

"And what if the guy hasn't changed?" Rika was the one to say it. "What if he only helped us in the Digital World because, I don't know, we were going there to fight Digimon?" Keeping the Digital World's Sovereigns from attaining Calumon's power? Of course Yamaki wouldn't have wanted the boss of the Devas to get an army of Megas that could be turned toward invading the human world!

On the ground where Takato knelt beside her, Jeri made a soft, despairing noise as she started to come around. "Jeri!" Takato called, obviously worried. How had that thing even gotten inside of her - and how had he missed it? No, that was easy enough to figure out - they'd all assumed that any unusual behavior came from the devastation of losing her partner. What had that thing done to her while the rest of them hadn't noticed what was going on?

"Oh, what… It's gone." Jeri sounded almost vaguely disappointed. The D-Reaper was cold, not like Leomon at all, but now she was empty again. It hurt again, without the certainty that everything would be over as soon as she was no longer useful. "I guess it didn't want me, now that it found its real partner." Was she alive because it forgot all about her?

"Its… partner?" Henry asked, incredulous. "I thought only Digimon had partners!"

"Yamaki was acting really weird when the Juggernaut was running," Takato remembered, the hand that wasn't on Jeri's shoulder resting on Guilmon's still-growling head. "Maybe it doesn't need a blue card?"

"Wait, guys, what are we waiting around here for?" Terriermon demanded. "After them!"

That was when they realized that Rika and Renamon were already gone. Impmon too.

"Oh no you don't," Riley told Terriermon, and the others with him. "You're not going anywhere until you tell me what that was. You brought that thing into the real world, but it's _our_ job to deal with it," she said, pulling her cell phone out of her purse with her free hand.

* * *

Jumping from roof to roof with a passenger took Kyuubimon's strength: after three jumps it was obvious to both Renamon and her tamer that they needed to pause long enough for her to Digivolve, otherwise they wouldn't have a chance to make up for lost time. "Be careful, Rika."

"I know, you too," Rika said as she grabbed on to the rope Kyuubimon wore. Her old self might have asked 'what are you telling me for? You're the one who's going to be fighting that thing,' unless she evolved into Sakuyamon. Which they would actually probably need to. Unless maybe the thing was weaker in the real world? It wasn't destroying everything it touched here - although it had somehow gotten inside Jeri without destroying her. Rika's eyes narrowed. The Sovereign didn't know it could do more than delete things, or they would have mentioned it. They weren't dealing with something mindless, but something powerful enough even the strongest Digimon didn't think they could win _and_ smart enough to hide what it was capable of.

…maybe they should have gone straight to Biomerging. Wait, could they even Biomerge in the real world? She wasn't data here, but then again Digimon went from data to actual organic molecules when they Bio-Emerged, and it didn't seem to stop them from turning back into data to Digivolve into _different_ molecules. Rika had been converted into data once herself, to go to the Digital World, so the rest of it was probably a matter of willpower and a blue card or whatever. That kind of thing worked for Takato.

They finally caught up with the thing that had taken Yamaki on the roof over Hypnos, where the first Deva had Bio-Emerged. Somehow, she'd known they would: this was one of the places they'd wanted to search for a portal to the Digital World, since that Juggernaut had made a weak point between the worlds. It had used Jeri to get to the human world: did it want to use Yamaki to get back to the Digital World, or to take him back with it? "Over there!"

The grey shape turned its head to look at them without turning its body, and when Kyuubimon jumped over it to block its path forward, hopefully trapping it between them and one of the others whenever any of them _got over here_ , they saw that it was holding its scythe to Yamaki's throat.

Jumping down from Kyuubimon, Rika folded her arms. "You're bluffing, right?" She knew how annoying it was when stuff didn't work the way it should. "Give up your best chance to get fixed in forever? Come on, we both know you're not going to do it."

The program grinned again, and vanished into Yamaki's body in much the same way as it had emerged from Jeri's. Except without going through a pink jello stage, she noticed, eyes narrowing. Already faster, huh?

As the Digimon Queen, Rika had to admit that was well played. It was holding Yamaki hostage: killing one part of the thing wouldn't kill the whole, but if it was inside Yamaki's body, how were they supposed to even attack it? "We still don't have to let you anywhere near a computer, you know."

Eyes that clearly weren't Yamaki's right now opened, and the True Enemy laughed at her. "Haven't you realized the reason I could exist inside my other host, and now my new programmer? Humans are programs, programs which have exceeded their parameters, and I can load myself into the systems you run on. Even destroying his body won't stop my errors from being fixed: I can upload his mind into the Digital World. I came here to find and destroy the light of Digivolution, the reason so many Digimon are exceeding their parameters. Becoming too powerful, taking up too many stolen system resources like the parasites you are," he told Renamon. "Just like you're stealing runtime from that human's system. When you are destroyed, her system will crash just like the Jeri's."

"You're a lot more articulate all of a sudden."

It smiled, and maybe it was having the right number of teeth that made it seem to have at least some normal happiness in there, not just vicious triumph. Not that the predatory edge was absent, oh no. This opponent felt _sharp_. The True Enemy in the Digital World had been an amorphous, unstoppable, slowly-engulfing mass, but in Yamaki's body it _saw_ her. "Better artificial intelligence allows efficient allocation of resources, allowing a program to make more effective use of those resources without stealing them from other processes."

In other words, the first thing it was making Yamaki do was make it smarter. She'd already noticed that it was faster at shape-shifting and could pick its targets better now. Rika didn't think Yamaki was that dumb, but then, Jeri wouldn't have brought this thing to the human world if she'd been in control. So if it could make him do whatever it wanted? "Are you planning to let him go?"

"Is she," Renamon, "planning to let you go? When she can use your brain to make herself so much more powerful?"

"That's not… Renamon's my partner!" Rika said, outraged.

"It is the same thing. He downloaded me, wanting the power to keep Digimon from intruding into this world, even if neither of us had the capacity to be conscious of it when the Juggernaut initiated. I was also invited into Jeri's system, but she's no programmer." She wasn't strong enough to be useful, other than as access to the capabilities of a human brain. _"She_ doesn't have detailed knowledge of exactly how unprepared this world is for an assault from the Digital World, and what kind of devastation could be achieved through use of appropriate tactics."

"Wait, what? Why are you going to attack us? We're not…" But in its eyes, they _were_ computer programs, and wasn't everyone talking about how humans were overrunning and ruining the rest of the planet?

"Look at this place." He waved at the cityscape. "Isn't it immediately apparent how much of it is dominated by a single type of program, and how few system resources are left over for essential processes that the system requires in order to function? The Digimon also fail to realize that by growing so powerful they can overburden the Digital World, and by posing a threat to humanity they would destroy the Digital World as well, since it can't continue to function without the systems you maintain and could _stop_ maintaining. My new programmer wants to protect humanity. He just didn't realize that right now, humanity is the biggest threat to itself, just like the Digimon's quest for more and more power endangers themselves and the system. Hmm, security is about to get here." The Reaper smirked. "I'm done here, so there isn't any reason not to come along quietly."

"Done?" Rika demanded as Kyuubimon watched with narrowed eyes, knowing that she'd been outmaneuvered, that whatever this thing did was going to be trouble.

She was right.

She dialed her grandmother's phone, "I'm fine, can you pass it over to…" Henry or Takato? Takato could Digivolve to Mega. If she was right about switching back and forth from data to matter or whatever. Henry was smarter, but Takato was generally the first to do all the really weird stuff. "Takato."

That thing had taken out Yamaki's cigarette lighter and was examining it, she saw out of the corner of her eye.

A woman's voice answered the phone as the D-Reaper flicked the lighter, producing a momentary flame.

"Where are you?"

"Top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, where that tiger Deva showed up."

"You're where? Fine, just… stay put. Hand security the phone when they get there, I'll talk to them. Is the director with you?"

"Yeah, but so's that thing. It went into him the way it came out of Jeri. Does Takato think we can Biomerge here? Ugh, nevermind." If Guilmon could evolve to Mega without Biomerging, even if it was a pretty messed-up Mega, Renamon definitely could, and she didn't want that thing overhearing that they might not be able to get past Ultimate.

A door suddenly opened, and out came men in suits with guns. At first they were covering the entire roof, but then they focused on her and Kyuubimon. "Director Yamaki?"

"No," Rika said firmly as the True Enemy smirked and inspected the cuffs of Yamaki's suit. "He's not. I'm supposed to give you the phone."

"By order of Operations Director Riley Ohtori," the voice of the phone supplied. "Yith Protocol."

Rika relayed the message and was gratified to see the agents change aim to start covering Not-Currently-Yamaki too; she didn't want to have to chase it down again. Hypnos had a protocol for their boss getting possessed? Probably a good idea, actually, now that she thought about it - there was that Dark Seed thing in the anime. A genius acting like Digimon weren't real people… Yeah, Hypnos' boss acted the way people under the influence of that thing did even before he got taken over for real. There were also Digimon that could pass for human, like Mummymon and Arukenimon – they weren't normal Digimon, but the True Enemy wasn't a normal _anything_.

Rika passed over the phone, and asked, "Does anyone have any handcuffs?" They'd only restrain Yamaki's wrists, and the thing could leave his body and do whatever, but the sound of it flicking that lighter was starting to get on her nerves.

"If you wouldn't mind, sir," one of the agents said, quite deferentially but they still weren't going to take no for an answer.

"Hmm… why not?" it wondered, and held out stolen wrists.

Because hopefully that way it couldn't get free to attack someone without leaving Yamaki's body the way it had left Jeri's, and then Renamon could maybe grab Yamaki and get him away quickly while Guilmon and Terriermon kept the thing pinned down, Rika didn't say.

"You said that you'd come quietly," Kyuubimon said, and de-Digivolved into Renamon. That way, she'd be able to maneuver faster once they went inside the building.

"Yes, Deputy Director," the man on the phone said again, and ordered another of the suits to, "Hand Miss Nonaka your cell phone so she can give them more information."

"Thanks," Rika said, glad to hear that someone was being smart, and punched in Takato's number. "Renamon, go with them."

Renamon nodded.

"Deputy Director, Rika Nonaka wants her Wild One to… Treat her as an escort for the prisoner, understood."

Good. They'd better not view that as Renamon turning herself in or something, or try to put handcuffs on _her_.

Rika waited until the door closed behind them to dial.

"Is this Rika?" a vaguely familiar male voice asked.

Ugh, Takato and Henry had already been asked to hand over their phones? Of all the times for adults to be efficient. "Hand the phone over to Takato, I need to know if he thinks we can still reach Mega here."

* * *

"I hope Jeri is going to be okay…" Takato said, glancing back at the door to Hypnos' infirmary. They were going to keep her in there overnight for observation and to see if they could find anything that could help Mr. Yamaki. They had a lot of high-tech equipment, but that made sense when Hypnos was supposed to deal with crazy stuff like Digimon.

They'd already let Kazu, Kenta and Suzy out hours ago – Takato, Henry and Rika had gotten booked for even more scans after explaining about Biomerging.

"I hope she's okay too," Henry agreed. "The rest of us made it out fine, and Suzy's safe, now, but I hope Ryo's doing okay back in the Digital World. It was getting pretty hairy when we left."

"I wonder what he had to talk to the Sovereign about?" Takato wondered.

Rika folded her arms. " _I_ wonder why he wouldn't do it with us there."

"It likely had more to do with his Digimon's desire for strong opponents," Renamon said.

"Right," Rika admitted. "If Cyberdramon went berserk on the Ark, or _attacked_ the Ark, we'd have been in trouble, and in the human world there's no one to fight but weak Digimon." If Cyberdramon went nuts, he'd have ended up tearing apart humans. "Until now, anyway."

Since the True Enemy had followed them home.

Renamon nodded. "I believe he said Cyberdramon was the reason he left the human world." So that Ryo's partner didn't go on a rampage in downtown Tokyo.

"He's probably more useful there than we are here," Rika said, annoyed. She might as well not have reacted in time to chase the thing at all when it had run off with Yamaki, for all the good it had done. "I guess it's time to go home and face the music."

"Didn't she tell you when she interviewed you?" Henry asked. "You were talking to her for awhile."

"Tell me what?"

"Director Ohtori asked everyone who was at the park to stay here for now. Hopefully it's just to sign non-disclosure agreements and make sure that thing didn't jump to anyone else, but..."

"What?" Rika demanded. "They're arresting our families? My mom has contracts! She's probably already in major trouble for taking a day off without a month's notice for _yesterday_ without missing anything else!"

"They're the government," Henry pointed out glumly. "We're lucky they're not hauling our partners away to some lab."

"They can try," Henry's partner said from his shoulder.

Henry didn't seem reassured at all.

"Don't worry, Guilmon," Takato said. "Nothing's going to happen to you. You don't have to be scared while we're here."

"What are you going to do?" Henry asked. "Run away to the Digital World?"

"If the Digital World's still there," Rika added.

"Director Ohtori _seems_ pretty reasonable, but they let Yamaki run this place. Someone must have thought he had the right idea, and then he helped us and ended up getting possessed by something from the network. That's not exactly a very good precedent for being tolerant of Digimon. My dad works here, so I guess I can ask him what he thinks will happen next," Henry said, still looking worried.

* * *

The head of security paused and chose his next words carefully. "With all due respect, ma'am, with Director Yamaki under the Yith Protocol, you're the acting Director and the only person with the security codes to fully resume operations." Director Yamaki had tightened the security on Hypnos (even further, that is, given that it had started _out_ as a top-secret system in the first place) after the acting Director assigned by the military activated Juggernaut a third time and was unable to shut it down; the politician in charge of Hypnos' civilian oversight had ultimately had to call Director Yamaki and Operations Director Ohtori back from their unofficial exile to resolve the situation.

Director Yamaki had authorized the Monster Makers and an unusual number of other people to make changes to the system during the effort to recover the children who had gone into the Digital World, but an attack from the Digital World had somehow completely _wiped_ the currently operational version of Hypnos during the transfer procedure. Director Yamaki hadn't given anyone but Operations Director Ohtori authorization to access the backup, since one of the reasons the backup existed was in case someone made stupid changes to the active system, and she was the only person he trusted to not screw up his baby.

The other staff could still start up the backup without either of them, but until that process was complete, Director Ohtori couldn't input the codes to give the Monster Makers, Dr. Onodera and the others the authorization needed to work _on_ the system instead of just _with_ the system again.

Since Wild Ones were attacking Japan and Hypnos was a logical target, the Director had of course taken precautions in case everyone with authorization died, but those codes were in the hands of the civilian oversight. And having to use them would mean _letting politicians pick the next Director of Hypnos_.

In the middle of a crisis like this, they couldn't afford confirmation hearings for a now-vital (or, more accurately, finally _recognized_ as vital) agency, or the risk that they'd be assigned someone from the military, or with more ambition than knowledge of computer science.

"Riley, you can't go in there," Tally cut in. "What if it grabs you too?"

The Security Director nodded.

"According to the children, a mass of what Shibumi called the D-Reaper hit the representation of the network itself immediately before the Ark started to have trouble," Riley told them. "If we're dealing with a kind of artificial intelligence that can just casually wipe out _our_ system? What do you think this thing can do to civilian systems? We need more information than what the kids got from observing it in the Digital World and secondhand from a brief encounter with one of the Monster Makers, and we need it now." She let out a frustrated sigh. "I _hope_ he had something in mind other than just giving the thing a better target so it would leave that kid alone."

The other two Hypnos staff members looked at each other. "The Director has always taken his responsibilities seriously. This wouldn't be the first time he had to act quickly in response to an urgent situation and decided that… an ill-advised plan was better than doing nothing."

"Riley, I know you're…" Dating him, which from the look in Tally Onodera's eyes meant her co-worker must have taken leave of some percentage of her senses, "but this is Director Yamaki we're talking about."

"No, there's something about what he was baiting it _with_. You've secured all copies of that recording, right?" she asked him.

He nodded. "No one at Hypnos thinks the Director would possibly betray humanity, but…"

"But that military idiot brought in several more scientists with him, and we held on to them because we needed the personnel." Riley knew. Yamaki'd put her in charge of coordinating the cover-ups, so she'd had to brush up on what she'd been taught when she was hired on at an intelligence agency. "They'll hear him practically offering to upgrade it and…" She wanted to smack herself. "Reprogramming it. Of course. Digimon and the D-Reaper may be able to Bio-Emerge, but they're still _programs_. He wanted _write access_ , and that thing _gave it to him_."

"Something must have gone wrong," Tally said. "It's been hours, and it's still in control. It must have enough control to keep him from sabotaging it," or he'd be done already.

"Well, how easy would it be for one of _our_ programmers to sabotage Hypnos without us spotting it and removing their access? Or refusing to implement the update that contained the sabotage attempt, at least. This is a sentient program, Tally. And getting smarter." Riley would take Rika's word for it. "The question is if he's in any condition to be subtle…"

"Hypnos is our first line of defense against invasion from the network. The Director gambling on his ability to work around a network denizen like that…"

"Hypnos is our first line of defense, and this thing _sniped_ us." Riley reminded him. "It took us out from the Digital World while already engaged in combat against the Digimon. The most powerful Digimon in the Digital World didn't think their odds were very good, and the children don't think they had any means of fighting it effectively. The director is reckless, but…" Riley pinched the top of her nose. "I need to talk to it."

"Ma'am…"

"That's an order from the acting _Director."_

"Director…"

"Riley…" Tally said, and just shook her head because Riley should _know_ why this was a bad idea, so Tally didn't know what to say without insulting her by repeating the obvious.

Riley took a deep breath, lowering her hand. "If there's anything of him in there, and I think there is, then it'll talk to me. If not, then we'll know who's running the show. Then..." She looked at the Security Director. "The D-Reaper has attacked Hypnos and falls under 'out-of-uniform combatant," or spy, "in time of war.' I need you to find me someone who doesn't know anything useful about Hypnos."

Tally blanched.

Hypnos hadn't lost anyone yet – a lot of injuries, but no deaths – but that was because the importance of the cover-up let Yamaki get first pick of the best trainers to develop really good _covert_ tactics for the field teams. Nobody wanted a shoot-out in Tokyo to be done sloppily enough for news of it to get out. So far, the only Wild Ones to even acknowledge the existence of Hypnos were the Devas, and according to the kids they hadn't _wanted_ to have to deal with humans or human opposition. They were searching for something they needed to fight the D-Reaper, and eliminating Hypnos would have wasted time when they didn't know how long they had until the D-Reaper attacked. So they'd secured their passage to and from the Digital World, and tried to intimidate Hypnos into staying out of their way so they wouldn't have to bother dealing with the organization.

An Ultimate like Mahiramon could have batted those helicopters out of the sky if it had actually cared about conquering the world, which would have required eliminating human resistance.

They'd been _lucky:_ was Tally only getting that now? When attack came from the Digital World, Hypnos was the first line of defense and therefore the first logical target.

No, it wasn't Tally she was angry at. Was Riley so angry because it looked like that luck might have finally run out _for the Director_?

Ugh, this was _exactly_ why people in their position shouldn't date in the chain of command. She knew her judgment was compromised, but who else's judgment was she going to trust? Tally and the Monster Makers were competent at what they did, but...

The Security Director grimaced. "If we execute the relevant portion of the Yith Protocol, it will most likely jump to another host. I'll ask for a volunteer, but I hope it doesn't come to that."

"I hope so too." For several reasons. "Judging from their reports on what happened to the Digital World, we do _not_ want to find out how destructive the D-Reaper is if provoked." Such as by someone trying to attack it in order to… 'free' the programmer it stole. "If anyone can find some way around this program to defang it somehow, it's the Director, but he knows more than _anyone_ else about Hypnos and the global resources that could be applied to dealing with an attack from the Digital World. According to Jeri, it scanned her memories. Mitsuo… Director Yamaki wouldn't want to be used against the world like that. He drew up the Yith Protocol," obvious from the name. _Why_ did he keep naming things after H.P. Lovecraft's mythos? Did he want to jinx everyone? "I know he considered that he would be a priority target." For enemies that wanted to possess or kill-and-replace.

The fact there was… sentiment involved just meant she had to respect his wishes.

They should have broken up or _something_ once the two of them were reinstated at Hypnos. Personal feelings skewed judgment and they'd known all along that they were going to end up _at war_. The military banned relationships like this _with good reason_. But it was too important for Riley to leave, she wouldn't just abandon the fight, and everything had just moved too fast for them to have time to play bureaucratic games with the chain of command.

Thank goodness they hadn't found that time, because if Riley had been taken out of the chain of command by assignment to the Monster Makers or something, the next in Hypnos' organizational chart was the Security Director – they were an intelligence agency – and he wasn't any kind of computer scientist. They needed someone who understood the situation enough to come up with plans and execute them, and they did _not_ have time to fill in a newbie right now.

Tally seized the distraction. "Do you think that's what the Director noticed? Maybe it was scanning everyone at the park somehow, and it wanted enough from his head that he noticed it?"

"I hope you're right, Tally."

"You _hope_ I'm right?"

"That's better than Daisy's theory. Look," Riley said. "The Digimon think this thing will _exterminate_ them. They have thousands of Megas now, and we have a handful of children. I haven't liked humanity's odds since I _joined_ this agency. It's not a matter of me putting myself at risk or not. _No one is safe_. Especially not anyone who works at Hypnos. Normally intelligence analysis agencies aren't on the front lines, especially not the upper ranks because we've got too much classified information in our heads, but Hypnos _is_ the front line, and if you ever thought otherwise then _you should have paid attention to the orientation briefings, Tally_."

"…It was kind of overdramatic. And, you know, the Director." He took some things so seriously it became hard to take him, and by extension them, seriously.

"Yes, I'm aware we need to rewrite those." At some hypothetical future date where they survived and even found themselves with time to spare. Maybe they could hire someone who did public speaking with _no computer or technical writing skills whatsoever_ so they didn't inevitably get drafted for something important the instant they had the security clearance required to work here? "Tally, you were working with me on this. You know there was nothing stopping a Wild One from Bio-Emerging right there in that room with us." Aside from the fact it was still too small for most of the Devas to fit. "The Director might have Hypnos scrub a lot of things, but our personal data is on some computer somewhere. Our _families'_ personal data is on some computer somewhere, and the Digital World is connected to _all_ computers, not just networked ones. We are all in danger, and the only way to be safe is to _find some way_ to be safe." Find it or program it. "To do that, we need intel. I've noted your objections, but I'm still going in there."

 _Someone's telling me that what I'm about to do is insanely risky and probably not going to work, I know they're right and I'm about to do it anyway_ , she thought, walking past them to the door of the conference room they'd pressed into service as a holding cell; the only place in the building that had already been set up to imprison Wild Ones was a lab, and they couldn't risk it letting the D-Reaper into a room with that many important computers and scientists around to be possessed. _They just want me to not get myself killed and I'm having a hard time not snapping at them._

 _Oh dear gods, I'm acting like Yamaki._

 _It's the job,_ she told herself. _Definitely the job that's cursed._

* * *

 _An Ultimate with a tendency to go berserk in a confined space surrounded by mainly human children and rookies without the HP to survive a stray attack, with the kind of powerful enemy that set him off right there was just asking for the walls of the Ark to get coated in organs before anyone had a chance to react. Ryo didn't_ want _to go back to the human world because he was afraid of that exact thing happening. He was helping the Tamers get safely on board the Ark, and then the anime had him climb on board too when he had absolutely no reason to change his mind and put those kids in danger? It's like the writers just didn't care... oh wait. They didn't._

 _So I don't consider Ryo not boarding the Ark in this fic a second For Want Of A Nail: I consider it a 'Well duh.'_

 _There was almost a second Adventure character in Tamers: Thank goodness we managed to escape having to watch Tai get character butchered as badly as Ryo was!_

 _The Dobermon thing is an insultingly transparent Deus Angst Machina. If you're going to make the viewers watch a dog die, it had_ better _be something the viewer already knows is especially difficult instead of something that should be absolutely no problem given what the worldbuilding has established._


End file.
